


Not-A-Father's Day

by bearonthecouch



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003), Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Adulting, Fatherhood, Gen, Military, Parenthood, Qualifying Life Events, Responsibility, Sleep Deprivation, Stress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 22:21:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17733731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearonthecouch/pseuds/bearonthecouch
Summary: “He needs some kind of parent.” Maes insists, realizing even as he says it that the idea had probably never occurred to Mustang, who grew up in a brothel and has no frame of reference for a traditional nuclear family. Still, even if he was never legally adopted, Roy did have someone looking out for him. And that’s the point Maes is trying to make.And that’s the point Roy finally seems to grasp as his eyes flicker up to meet Maes’. “And you think that’s you?”“I guess so, if it’s not gonna be you.”- #HyuroiWeek Day 5: Prompt: Pride and Joy -





	Not-A-Father's Day

**Author's Note:**

> kinda-sorta written for tumblr's #HyuroiWeek but I'm impatient, kinda-sorta a direct prequel/companion piece to [decipher](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17206385)

“You look like hell.”

Maes looks up to see Colonel Mustang leaning against the frame of the open door to his office. He’s got a small smile on his face, but it’s obvious his hair hasn’t seen a comb in possibly days, and he may have slept in his uniform.  
  
“You’re one to talk,” Hughes observes.

“Mm,” is all Roy says.  
  
“I just had a baby,” Maes points out. “What’s your excuse?”

Indeed, Elicia is barely two weeks old. But it’s not like an active investigation stops just because Hughes hasn’t gotten more than two hours of unbroken sleep in at least four days. He’s surrounded by reports and crime scene photos and evidence logs, the finally-broken case of a serial killer that’s been at work in Central for years, sporadically enough that Maes hadn’t figured out his pattern until now. Actually, Maes _hadn’t_ figured out his pattern. Edward Elric had, and then he’d broken down for the second time in a week because he keeps encountering the kinds of horrors you’re not supposed to see outside of a war.

The kid had nearly _died_. And given what little of the story Hughes is aware of, the altercation with Barry the Chopper in the back of a meat truck was not Ed’s first near-death experience.

So all in all, although solving something like this is the kind of thing that should make him ecstatic, Maes is, instead, battlefield exhausted. He is just so fucking _tired_.

Roy steps into the investigations office and sits down in the one chair that is not holding stacks of papers.

Hughes closes the file in his hand and sets it down before turning to Roy. Roy who has that look on his face like he’s done something wrong. Like he’s afraid of disappointing Maes. Hughes leans back against the table that serves as his makeshift desk and raises an eyebrow. A question without words.

Roy breathes out, and chews on his lower lip.

“How’s the kid?” Maes finally says.

“He quit the military.”  
  
“What the hell did you do, Mustang?”

“Nothing!” Roy protests immediately. “I just… Brigadier General Grand wanted someone to organize Tucker’s research.”

Something dark and accusing flickers across Maes’s face. “Why would you give something like that to a _child_ ? For _fuck’s_ sake, Roy, he’s twelve years old!”

“He’s qualified,” Roy says softly, not looking at Maes. “He’s more qualified than I am. He spent a week doing nothing but studying Shou’s library, and... “ Mustang takes a heavy breath. “And he knows more about bio-alchemy than I do.”

“Human transmutation, you mean.”

Roy nods.

Maes stares at him.

“Do you have any idea where he is?” he finally asks.

Roy just shrugs. He doesn’t.  
  
Maes takes a deep breath, trying to remain calm, but Roy’s laissez-faire inability to form any kind of lasting attachment isn’t forgivable when an innocent kid is the one paying the price. He slams his fist down on the table and lets himself shout. “You let a traumatized pre-teen go wandering around Central City by himself? Isn’t that how he nearly got himself killed in the first place?!”

Roy actually flinches. Maes tries to remember if there’s ever been another time he’d yelled at him, but he can’t come up with one.

“Riza’s with him,” Mustang says quietly.

As if that changes anything. As if that would make Roy _or_ Maes feel any better if anything happened to the kid.

“At least one of you has an inkling of parental responsibility,” Maes huffs.

“Edward is _not_ my child.”

Maes just stares at him. Yeah, Roy spends most of his time in East and Maes rarely knows everything he gets up to, but Edward Elric literally just turned twelve. He was _ten_ when Mustang met him. When the fuck did Roy become the kind of man who looks at a crippled, orphaned ten-year-old and thinks ‘I can make him a soldier.’?

“He needs some kind of parent.” Maes insists, realizing even as he says it that the idea had probably never occurred to Mustang, who grew up in a brothel and has no frame of reference for a traditional nuclear family. Still, even if he was never legally adopted, Roy did have someone looking out for him. And that’s the point Maes is trying to make.

And that’s the point Roy finally seems to grasp as his eyes flicker up to meet Maes’s. “And you think that’s you?”

“I guess so, if it’s not gonna be you.”

Ed and Al have spent more time at Hughes’s house than Hughes himself has, in the week since Shou Tucker’s sickening chimera was found splattered across a wall. Maes couldn’t save four-year-old Nina, and he knows that Ed feels like he should’ve been able to, too. But Ed’s taking on far too much guilt and fear for someone his age. The Barry the Chopper case on the heels of Tucker’s twisted human experimentation is fucking with Maes more than he wants to admit, and he lived through Ishval.

And his head is all scrambled from suddenly being a father. He doesn’t know why it feels so _sudden_. Theoretically, he had nine months to get used to the idea, but he isn’t. When he holds little tiny Elicia pressed up against his own body, it’s enough to make him cry. He does it in the middle of the night, tipping back and forth on a rocking chair that Gracia claims was once her father’s. And he wipes away his tears with the back of his free arm while Elicia’s wide eyes stare up at him, and Alphonse Elric’s pink soulfire orbs glow steadily from within the still and silent suit of armor. He always seems embarrassed to interrupt whatever bonding Maes is supposed to be doing with his daughter, but Al doesn’t sleep and there’s really nowhere else for him to go except the Hughes’ living room. So Maes shifts Elicia to his shoulder and rubs her back as she cries or yawns or sleeps, and he sits down next to Al and tries to feel him out: what does he think about his brother being swallowed up by the Amestrian Military? Is he doing okay after… well, everything? Maes wouldn’t have believed in the possibility of a person living without a body, but Al is evidential proof of that possibility, right in front of him. So he revises his preconceptions and forces himself to remember that, far from being invincible, Al is even younger than Edward and has even less to hold onto.

And Maes hasn’t slept in days and everyone from Brigadier General Grand to the Central City Times to the fucking Fuhrer himself is breathing down his neck, asking questions he can’t answer and demanding results he doesn’t have.

“Maes,” Mustang pleads, and Hughes just shakes his head because he just _can’t_ . His capacity for taking care of other people is well past its limit and Roy is a grown man and a _colonel_ , for whatever the hell that’s worth. Roy outranks him. He’s gotta be able to handle his own problems right now. He _has to_.

“I don’t know how to do it,” Roy admits.  
  
“Do what?” Hughes finally sighs.

“Take care of a kid. Kids. They’re better off with you.”

“They’re just sleeping on my couch, Roy. Do you really think Gracia wants to adopt a pre-adolescent soldier? She has a hard enough time with me.”

They stare at each other for a long moment, uncomfortable, guilty, and afraid. This is bigger than they can handle. Suddenly, they are responsible not only for themselves - which is honestly hard enough - but for the safety and well-being of children who can’t, and shouldn’t have to, take care of themselves. They’ve both commanded soldiers, but it’s different. Even though Mustang will let the illusion that Edward Elric is no different from any other soldier stretch until it inevitably snaps and breaks.

Maes has always seen right through the illusion, anyway. He’s only known the kid for a couple of weeks, almost exactly as long as he’s known brand-new Elicia Hughes, but he’s sat with Ed on the couch or at the kitchen table talking him through the nightmares that lead him to thrash around and cry out in his sleep. He’s talked him through the bare-bones absolute need-to-knows of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, because apparently Mustang hadn’t, thinking the kid would pick it up by osmosis or whatever. For being geniuses at a level most of the population can never hope to match, alchemists can be really fucking stupid sometimes.

“He quit the military,” Roy reminds Hughes, who just rolls his eyes.  
  
“Go talk to him, Mustang. He looks up to you.”

And Roy looks uncertain, but he finally nods, and Maes turns back to the disconcerting crime scene photos of the explosion of blood that’s all that’s left of Nina Tucker. He’s _just closed_ a case, and now there’s another mysterious unsolved homicide that’s his responsibility, and he hasn’t even had time to take a breath in between. And he hasn’t talked to his wife in god knows how long; when he does make it home, she gives him a hug and he kisses her and then she takes advantage of the fact that he’s there to look after Elicia, and she sleeps.

Maes stumbles over to the coffeemaker and watches the coffee drip through to the carafe, slowly. It’s almost meditative. Or he’s just that tired. When there’s enough to fill a paper cup, he returns to his desk.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but when the phone rings, it jolts him awake and his heart is beating way too fast inside his chest even as he fumbles to pick up the receiver. “‘lo” he mutters.

“He un-quit,” Roy says into the phone.  
  
Maes wracks his brain trying to remember who or what Mustang is talking about, but by the time his mouth has opened to speak, the answer has come to him. His brow furrows. “You can do that?”

“Well, I’m the only person he ever told he was quitting in the first place. It’s not like I filed the paperwork.”

Hughes smiles. “You knew he was going to come back.”

“I do have a pretty good feel for people, Maes.”

“You wanted him to come back.”

“He’s _not_ my kid.”

“Yeah. ‘K. Don’t worry, Roy, I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“Just get some sleep first, Maes, okay?” Roy pleads, with surprising seriousness. “I’m worried about you.”

Maes smiles, and quashes the instinct already bubbling up that wants to tell Roy that he’s fine. “Yeah,” he says instead. “That sounds like a good idea.”


End file.
